Aces of Trades: Writer Margot Singer following winding path to Denison

GRANVILLE – What comes from a creative mind and a great education? The answer may not be so obvious. Ask Margot Singer. She’s still (jokingly) trying to figure it out.

“I was the kind of child,” she said, “who hated adults who asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. I had no idea. I still have no idea!”

“I never imagined myself becoming a professional writer,” she added. “I suppose I didn’t dare. I didn’t really imagine an actual career as a writer could be within my reach.”

Today Singer is not only a creative writer but director of the Eisner Center for the Performing Arts, professor of English and director of creative writing, director of the Lisska Center for Scholarly Engagement and director of the Reynolds Young Writers Workshop – all at Denison University.

“I had absolutely no expectation I would end up in the arts or academia,” she noted. “I just loved school.”

Singer grew up in the Boston area, graduated from an all-girls high school in Wellesley, Mass. in 1980 and earned her undergraduate degree in history and literature from Harvard-Radcliffe in 1984. She followed that with a master’s from the University of Oxford in England (where she was a Marshall Scholar) and a PhD in English/creative writing from the University of Utah.

“After finishing college,” she clarified, “I won a graduate fellowship, a Marshall Scholarship, to study in the U.K. for two years, where I earned a master’s degree in international relations at Oxford. Of course, at the end of those two years, I still didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I thought I might become a journalist or maybe a diplomat, even though I didn’t much care for the reporting part of being a reporter and didn’t have a clue what diplomats really did.”

Then life took a turn.

“The international management consulting firm, McKinsey & Co., showed up unexpectedly at Oxford to recruit,” she remembered. “Campus recruitment at Oxford in the 1980s was not really a thing. But I was offered an interview, then invited to fly to New York for a final round. Much to my surprise, I got an offer. So I accepted it. I stayed for ten years. I worked in the London and New York offices and became one of the few (at the time) women partners in the firm.”

Singer was in her 30s when she left McKinsey and moved to Salt Lake City, got married and had two children.

“I decided,” she stated, “this was the time to see if I could really learn to write.”

After earning her PhD in English, life took another turn.

“In 2004, one of my professors tapped me on the shoulder and encouraged me to apply for the job at Denison,” she recalled. “I had once spent two days in Cincinnati, so Ohio was not exactly on my radar. But when I came to Granville, I knew immediately this was the right place.”

“Denison is incredibly lucky to have Margot,” assessed Peter Grandbois, professor of creative writing and contemporary literature at Denison. “Besides being an award-winning author and star teacher, she has a unique ability to see through any complex problem and objectively fix it. I suppose this is due in part to her background at McKinsey Consulting, but I think it has more to do with her extraordinary intelligence and unwillingness to play the usual games people play. Denison is a better place because of her.”

“It’s a great job,” Singer responded. “I’m proud of my students and gratified by the opportunity to serve as their teacher and mentor. I’m excited by what we’ve accomplished and by all that lies ahead.”

Aces of Trades is a weekly series focusing on people and their jobs – whether they’re unusual jobs, fun jobs or people who take ordinary jobs and make them extraordinary. If you have a suggestion for a future profile, let us know at advocate@newarkadvocate.com or 740-328-8821.